Thursday, February 25, 2016

Which Way Did He Go? Lateral Character Movement in Film

In another example of things you never thought about before, we find out about the importance of lateral movement in film. We feel more natural when the action moves from left to right on the screen instead of the converse, even when we don’t notice or can’t articulate the difference. Filmmakers know that, even before research that confirmed it. And it’s not just movement, either. There’s a reason that the devil sits on a character’s shoulder to our left, while the angel sits on the shoulder to our right. This explanation comes to us from Now You See It.